Tuesday, December 19, 2017

One of the most-read guest posts of 2017 on the CFM Blog sharedt how immersive theater helped one Connecticut museum build new audiences. Since the topic evidently struck a chord with readers, I tuned my radar to find other examples of museum—theater collaborations.Today on the Blog, Maureen Rolla, director of strategic initiatives for the four Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh, tells us about a recent production that I wish I had seen in person!

Nearly 10 years ago, CFM’s Museums & Society 2034: Trends and Potential Futures speculated that the proliferation of interactive digital technologies would ultimately lead audiences “to expect to be part of the narrative experience at museums.” Since then, there’s been much discussion by CFM and others about the growing desire for more participative experiences and museums’ opportunities to incorporate such activities—tools like VR and AR and other enhanced storytelling—to create empathy and meaning.

With those issues at the fore, Carnegie Nexus—an initiative of the four Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh—and Bricolage Production Company—named one of “7 Companies Producing Groundbreaking Immersive Theater” by Backstage.com—teamed up to present DODO: The Time Has Come, a world-premiere theatrical experience at Carnegie Museums of Art and Natural History.

The Custodian. Photo by
Handerson Gomes

For six weeks this fall, the museums opened their doors after hours to small groups of intrepid adventurers—members of the hitherto secret “National Self-Preservation Society”—whose 90-minute initiation included contemplating artworks in galleries illuminated only by glowing lanterns, helping collections staff prepare scientific specimens, and one-on-one encounters with characters in hidden nooks and crannies, ranging from an attic crawl space to the subbasement. Threaded through the experience were themes of loss and memory. Focusing on the Sixth Extinction, the ongoing extinction event due primarily to human activity, DODO encouraged participants “to ponder the fates not only of lost species, but of lost artists, lost languages, lost songs and poems, and lost ways of life as well.”(Pittsburgh Tatler)

The sold-out run attracted more than 1,700 people, with an additional 180 turning out for a live-streamed Talk Back with the cast, creative team, and museum staff. Post-performance surveys resulted in an impressive 22% response rate, with 61% indicating the production caused them to see the museums in a new light: “This is the most unusual inside view you will ever get of the Carnegie Museums, no matter how many times you have been there—magical.” “Being in the museums after hours literally took my breath away.” One reviewer noted, “After the experience, I feel much more connected to museums now, shaken up by how much life and learning they can facilitate. . . Giving experimental, original performance work a chance to properly develop into something as stunning and grand as DODO is rare.” (No Proscenium)

In the attic.
Photo by Handerson Gomes

From the beginning, both parties were intent on challenging traditional rules of engagement, but doing so—especially in 17-acres of historic buildings filled with priceless artifacts—required an enormous amount of trust and cooperation. During the two-year development process, Bricolage interviewed scores of staff members, immersed themselves in the museums’ stories, and eventually came to know our buildings as well as (or better than) we know them ourselves. We pierced the barrier between “public” and “behind-the-scenes” spaces, not just because it made for great theater, but to offer a tactile experience of the collecting and research activities that are at the heart of museums, yet are so often hidden from view. We treaded the line between fiction and fact, honoring the creators’ imaginative ambitions, while ensuring that information about the collections would be factual.

Choosing the Sixth Extinction as a core theme had special relevance, given our Museum of Natural History’s focus on the Anthropocene, currently in its exhibition We Are Nature: Living in the Anthropocene, and looking forward to the creation of a new Center for Anthropocene Studies. The open-ended nature of the script purposefully left room for participants’ contributions, inviting them to reflect on their own relationships with nature and responsibilities for safeguarding it. When asked to reflect on what DODO was about, most—not surprisingly—cited themes of “extinction and loss” and “humans’ interconnectedness with the earth and universe.” But many went beyond content to describe the effect the show had on them, suggesting the potential immersive experiences have for driving relevance and impact: “DODO is an ethereal and intimate journey…that calls to question the natural, spiritual, and physical foundations of our world. It will change you.” “This event literally changed the way I think about myself. I was completely emotionally invested.”

In Polar World. Photo by Handerson Gomes

What might we have done differently? Many participants wanted a chance to socialize and compare experiences immediately after the show. There were logistical challenges to making that happen, but we agree it would have enhanced the experience.

Now, just a few weeks after the close of DODO, we’ve started to discuss how the work can influence our museum practice. For example, by incorporating special lighting and sound and creating drama around specific objects; providing exclusivity through special after-hours viewings; offering individualized experiences and storytelling that keeps audiences front-and-center; and increasing access to behind-the-scenes experiences, which proved to be one of the most resonant aspects of the production.

We know other museums are experimenting with immersive theater in their venues, and we’re keen to compare notes and share ideas as our thinking develops.

Maureen Rolla is the director of strategic initiatives for the four Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh, spearheading projects like Carnegie Nexus that leverage the collective assets of the museums outside disciplinary silos and hierarchical boundaries. Previously, she was deputy director of Carnegie Museum of Art (1999-2013) and administrative director of the Getty Leadership Institute (1992-1999).

Tuesday, December 12, 2017

In his story for Museum 2040, Omar Eaton-Martinez posits a
future in which the United States establishes its own Truth and Reconciliation
Commission (TRC) to deal with the “atrocities and long-term impact of the
genocide of First Nation peoples, enslavement of Africans, and incongruent
immigration policies towards non-white peoples.” Futures studies teaches us
that every plausible future has a toe hold in the present, so Omar’s story sent
me in search of museums already formally involved in truth and reconciliation.
Canada created a TRC in 2008 to address the damage inflicted by the Canadian
residential schools that systematically separated indigenous children from
their families. Cara Krmpotich, Director
and Associate Professor in the Museum Studies program at the Faculty of Information,
University of Toronto, has worked extensively with museums engaged in
reconciliation work, and in today’s guest post she envisions where that work
may lead us by the year 2040.

Just over a
generation ago, in 2015, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) released
its final report and Calls to Action in Canada. The truth
it brought to light was the history of Indigenous children being taken from
their families and placed in Residential Schools with the goal of assimilating
them into Euro-Canadian, Christian society. It continues to inspire reconciliation
between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Canadians, but less public
reconciliations are also happening within Indigenous families and communities. Back
then, one of the lead Commissioners of the TRC, Justice Murray Sinclair, suggested that since the
residential school experience spanned seven generations, the work of
reconciliation would likely take multiple generations as well. Following this
advice, our museum started thinking in generations.

Although
the TRC focused on Residential Schooling in Canada, it opened a much larger
conversation about decolonization. Those of us trained in anthropology and ethnographic
museums, thought we had been “decolonizing the museum” for many years prior to
the TRC. There was the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act in
the US, the Assembly of First Nations and Canadian Museums Association Task
Force Report in Canada, and constant conversations about collaboration, access,
and post-colonialism. But in the wake of the TRC, the sense of power and
purpose shifted. Museums were pushed to consider radical alternatives grounded
in Indigenous sovereignty.

Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal representatives from 4Rs YouthMovement present the 4Rs drum made by Nisga'a artistMike Dangeli, as an expression of reconciliation at the Truth andReconciliation Commission Alberta National Event, March 2014.

At our museum,
we chose to listen to one message in particular: Give It All Away and Start
Again. In 2016 Lakota artist and professor, Dana Claxton, suggested this action
at the spring meeting of the Canadian Art Museum Directors
Organization,
and soon after that her fellow artist, Tania Willard, transformed the sentiment
into a work of art. Many institutions came up with
rationales for why they couldn’t act on this suggestion. Our museum – a
municipal museum like many others across the country – decided to dedicate our
first generation of reconciliation work to “Giving it All Away.” We are now
embarking on our second generation of work, which is to “Start Again,” with the
re-creation of collections representing Indigenous peoples, built from scratch with
full and informed consent.

Giving It
All Away took a lot of time, starting with the effort to rally staff and board
members to the cause. A few people resigned over this decision, but at least
they didn’t try to stop what we were doing. We took the advice of Indigenous
leaders to begin our reconciliation work by starting locally. It took time to
earn the trust of Indigenous nations—but trust is at the heart of
reconciliation.

The museum suspended
its usual exhibition schedule for five years and used its galleries to bring
all its Indigenous collections out of storage. Our exhibition budget was
repurposed to bring groups from communities in to see the collections and, as
Cree and Anishinaabeg Elders and Survivors phrased it, to identify which people
belonged to which objects. We listened to the call to reconnect knowledge to
place by moving public and school
education programs out of the museum and into the communities. This practice
ended up being so successful that it continues to be our main approach today. Museum
educators currently run their programs on city streets, in ravines, at the
lakeshore, in forests and on farms, and rarely in the museum. The museum’s
collections are constantly in contact with the environment, as are ideas and
our visitors.

It took
twelve more years to give all our Indigenous collections back. Every possible
destiny for those objects has been fulfilled. Now we are Starting Again. Our
approach for this generation of reconciliation work is to collect through
prior, free, informed consent. If donations are offered from non-Indigenous
donors, we only accept them with the consent of the individual, family and/or First
Nation who belongs with that item. We worry less about ownership and more about
accountability, and this is reflected in the terms of our donation agreements.
For Indigenous acquisitions, we plan for four generations of accountability
between the museum and the individual, family and community, with the provision
that after four generations either the item will revert back to the individual,
family and community, or we will renew our stewardship by articulating our
accountability to each other for the next
four generations.

Our plan
for the third generation of reconciliation work will require a fundamental
rethinking of how our institution is funded. The city agreed to continue
operational funding to the museum for a period of 40 years, after which time,
we need to propose and justify a new budget model that reflects and enables our
new ways of working. We are shifting from five-year strategic plans and
ten-year director-led visions, to a museum practice based on twenty-year
generations. We are just coming to understand what it means to work in
generations, from measuring impact to planning staff positions, from predicting
contingencies to maintaining relationships.

Our fourth
generation of reconciliation will be the repatriation of the lands on which the
museum sits. For now, we are learning to give away, to give back, without fear
and without loss.

And Cara
notes:

I’d like to
acknowledge Dana Claxton and Tania Willard for bringing their ideas so
powerfully into the world; members of our TRC Reading Group Courtney Jung,
Melissa Levin, Jennifer Orange, Cheryl Suzack, and Neil Ten Kortenaar; Camille
Callison; Lucy Bell, Nika Collison, and Vince Collison; the MMMC group; and
colleagues and students at the iSchool. I have done my best to treat the ideas
you’ve shared with me with respect. Any misunderstandings or errors are my
responsibility.

Cara Krmpotich is
Director and Associate Professor in the Museum Studies program at the Faculty
of Information, University of Toronto. She teaches and researches in the areas
of museum and indigenous relations, critical collections management, cultural
property and material culture. Much of her work has been about getting
Indigenous material heritage back into the hands of Indigenous peoples. She has
worked in museums in the UK and in Canada, is active in the Ontario Museum
Association, has written twobooks,
and most recently, worked with Anishinaabeg and Cree seniors in Toronto,
learning about their life experiences, collective memory, and urban Indigenous
culture, all elicited through handling of collections. You can find her on
Twitter @MMStCara

Tuesday, December 5, 2017

Museum 2040—the current special issue of Museum—adheres pretty closely to the usual format
of the magazine. It opens with a letter from the Alliance’s CEO, though in 2040
that CEO is a licensed psychiatrist starting a three-year stint as a “rotator”
at AAM. Toward the end readers will find announcements about new jobs, though
these include positions such as spiritual services director, poet-in-residence
and director of fun. Each issue of Museum is anchored by a By the Numbers column presenting a few key facts and
trends about the world and about museums. Realizing this feature could play a
vital role in orienting readers to the scenario in which this issue is set, I
recruited regular contributor Susie Wilkening, principal of Wilkening
Consulting, to paint a numeric picture of this particular version of the future.
Today on the blog, Susie shares a bit about what went into finding, or
fabricating, realistic and credible projections about the year 2040.

Whenever
Elizabeth asks me to think about the future, my first inclination is always to start
by looking to the past. In this case, my 2040 “By the Numbers” assignment had
me thinking of 1994. I was in college, and had a 486 computer on which I wrote
my papers … but I checked my email daily via Georgia Tech’s broadband
connection. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

The point
being, if you had plucked me out of 1994 and put me into 2017, yes, life is
different, but we are all humans going through life’s ups and downs, and
sustaining our physical lives. My assumption then, for 2040, was the same. Life
will be different, yet the same.

Putting
together a 2040 edition of “By the Numbers” was fun, daunting, and not that
different than creating one for the present. I scanned for ideas, reviewed the issue’s
essays and articles, and spent a fair amount of time thinking about the trends
I’m seeing in society (and in museums) from my own work.

Thirty-plus
ideas later, Elizabeth and I began sifting. The scenario in which Museum 2040 is set reflects a future
shaped by current trends—no dire catastrophes, no miraculous good news, just
business-as-usual playing out over the next 23 years. For this reason, we
tossed out our most pessimistic concepts (such as listing the number of cities
submerged by rising sea levels). On the flip-side, since we weren’t being
wildly optimistic we had to axe the budget for a new US Department of Arts and Culture.
I had thought of highlighting a car museum where you could drive real cars (an anachronism in the 2040 world of autonomous
vehicles) but the New York Times kind of beat me to it.

We settled on
eight data points from the future that were rooted in today’s reality. Here’s my
thinking behind those eight choices:

An aging population. Demographic change was an obvious
candidate for inclusion because of its profound effect on society. Racial and
ethnic change pervade the 2040 issue in many ways, but the dramatic aging of
the population (and practically stagnant population growth for children) wasn’t
so obvious in the stories by our authors. I clearly needed to highlight that
shift, and went to the US Census Bureau’s population projections to pull “real” numbers. Done.

6,152,440 kWh of energy
generated by the 20 largest science centers. I’ll be honest. I had no idea how to make up credible numbers about renewable energy, so
I turned to my friend and energy engineer, Jim Guertin, for help. Although we
discussed multiple renewable sources, we decided to keep it simple and focus on
photovoltaics. Jim then made energy generation estimates (less consumption),
and sent me a crazy spreadsheet. I researched how much energy the typical house
uses today (as good an estimate as any), and suddenly those 20 science center
were powering 569 homes. (This doesn’t even count those other possible
renewable sources, or other museums!)

5 extinct species
successfully revived by the Zoo of the Long Now. Honestly, I just pulled that
straight from the “What’s New” section. And the illustration was a no-brainer.
It had to be a dodo!

2,132 museum schools
serving more than half a million K-12 students. I give credit to Elizabeth for instigating
this statistic. My job was primarily to say “let’s pull back on your lovely yet
optimistic number a bit.” We compromised at 2,132.

18 percent increase in
percentage of American adults visiting at least one museum per year. The 2017 number for the graph was
easy: AAM’s Museums and America 2017 sampling (forthcoming) showed that 33% of
Americans had visited a museum in the past year. But 2040? Since just over half
of families with young children visit museums today, we thought that was a reasonable stretch goal for the entire
population. So, 51% … an increase of 18 percentage points.

Health
and wellness: This summer, I had spent a fair amount of time reading reports
linking cultural consumption and well-being (you can find my reviews at The
Curated Bookshelf).
Then three different essays in the issue also focused on this theme. Obviously,
this was important, so we devoted three graphics to it:

$425 million in impact
investments in museum programs to improve health and wellness outcomes. I assumed Jessica Liu-Rodriguez (Funder
Spotlight, page 37) wasn’t alone in wanting to see more health and wellness
impact, and came up with a reasonable (though imaginary) 2017 number, plugged
it into an inflation calculator, and got $425 million.

1,112 museums operating
well-being and cognitive health centers. Given the rather conclusive evidence finding that
challenging one’s mind aids cognitive health, the well-being and cognitive
health centers were obvious … and 1,112 within the realm of possibility.

But
what about health and wellness in daily life? The Newport Cultural Ecosystem (Accreditation
Spotlight, page 39) provided a case study of a holistic cultural organization
that would likely be at the forefront of health and wellness. Being a small
city, it wouldn’t be as challenging to engage the medical community and get
measurable results. Thus, 12% of Newport,
RI residents receiving a medical prescription to visit and engage with the
Cultural Ecosystem.

Some of these
numbers are made up, and some are just a bit optimistic. Yet they are also
rooted in trends and data that are real and possible for museums build on. I’m
excited about the opportunities we all saw for museums in 2040, and the
meaningful impact those new initiatives would have on individuals and
communities. Now our job is to make that optimistic future a reality.

Susie
Wilkening (@susiewilkening) is the principal of Wilkening Consulting. She has 20 years of experience in museums, including over ten
years leading custom projects for museums as well as fielding groundbreaking
national research on the role of museums in American society. She resides in
Seattle, and is working hard to raise her two young children to be empathetic,
creative, global citizens … by taking them to museums early and often.

Tuesday, November 28, 2017

I continue to be gratified by the feedback on our "future" issue of Museum magazine. (Your digital copy available here.) Comments coming in through Twitter, email, and text message include "weird and wonderful," "inspiring," and (most frequently) "thought-provoking." A few people were concerned to see an obituary for Cecelia Walls, the Alliance's content and editorial strategist. Rest assured that Cecelia is alive and well, and had a blast writing her own obit. (I do confess to having suggested that the mechanism for her demise be a morally-challenged self-driving car.)

As promised, we are extending this exercise in future-fiction by publishing additional essays and responses here on the blog. Today's post is by Rich Faron, president of Museum Explorer. Rich expands a story thread that Museum 2040 touched on briefly: the future of museums in space.

When it was first unveiled, the
idea for the now world-renowned International Space Station Museum (ISSM)
emerged as a lightning rod for not only the unresolved issues of our own nation
but in fact for many struggles being grappled with around the entire world. ‘Why, ‘said so many, ‘should so much valuable emotional
energy [and more to the point, money] be marshaled in an effort to build
something which most people could only conceive of at best, as symbolic?'

A lot of smart people dispensed
with the notion completely saying that it could never be undertaken as a true
‘bricks and mortar’ project and besides what about getting visitors to the
front door? Well, at least the second argument turned out to be not so much a
problem as both ‘Twilight Tours’ and the almost economical ‘Public
Space Bus Authority’ now regularly shepherd thousands of people on tours
across the heavens every week. And the ISSM is being scheduled now as regular
stop.

But back then for most folks
the timing was simply bad. The original concept made its first splash even as
our country still struggled to recover and mend the many wounds rendered by
decades of political infighting following 9/11 that flowed from the extreme
nature of partisan politics beginning in the late 20-teens.

But, people were somehow
inspired by this ‘Space Museum’ idea, and so it grew and took hold. Ordinary
people were prodded to ponder and weigh the merits of the proposed museum for
‘All of Us’. A place floating in space 250 miles above our heads. The rally cry
was simple, as a species we needed this right now and if we could pull it off,
if we could actually do it, it might truly stand as a commemoration for
everyone everywhere of what we knew we were capable of achieving as human
beings.

The moment that the idea first
sprang into consciousness is easy to pinpoint. A letter was read aloud by an
attendee speaker at the AAM annual museum conference in 2018 during an average
session, the letter was in closing to the speaker’s presentation and it came to
her from an elementary school class in Peoria, Illinois. They wanted to know
one simple thing; “When would the first museum in space open?." The
kids were prompted by their teacher to come up with an idea for a museum
celebrating all Earth’s creatures, plants and peoples. And like children often
do, they picked the obvious if not perfect place for their museum: up.

Looking back now, and as I sit
here in the museum lobby, gazing out the panoramic window with a view of Earth
below, the sharp-edged disk of ‘Terra’ cutting across the blanket of space, it
seems a bit easy to forget that once, the shock of taking on such an enormous
task seemed crazy. But when the initial ‘nuts’ of it passed, a buzz brewed up
almost overnight and soon everyone harbored an opinion about the ‘Museum in
Space.'

That
idea once read out loud in that modest professional meeting gained its own
momentum; it spread and grew. The response from some more exuberant corners of
the world was almost immediate if not crazy. “Hey why not!” Collectively
and indeed with a bit of what became known as ‘Earth Patriotism,' many
coalitions of ‘regular’ folks began to scurry about and to take on, for no
other reason than cause itself, the job to make it a reality. And these were
not just museum people (although there were many of them), but all kinds of
ordinary humans.

Pushing back against the
aforementioned but no doubt legitimate concerns and resistance held by many
people, the ‘believers’ simply began work on solving the problems. Collectively
engaging in a process of pooling creativity and human resources on a project
management scale not previously witnessed. In retrospect, it now appears much
less a heroic effort than a simply practical one. Frenzy was in fact the only
means for overcoming the inherent inertia and for getting the job done. At some
critical point, the ISSM project simply gained an uninterruptible momentum.

By combining talents across the
board design schematics were drawn up and engineering challenges were
presented, researched, developed, resolved and manufactured. As it turns out
the irony may be that getting the space museum ‘building’ funded and built and
even launching the components into orbit was less a grind than what was needed
to overcome the gravity of curating the content for a museum intended as
representation of an entire planet. It’s not worth rehashing any of the
specifics, suffice to say there was a lot of hand wringing, teeth gnashing and
even perhaps a few bruised knuckles. But the work got done leading to an
unsurpassed achievement a framework for the first ‘Off-World’ museum.

To be clear, it was a story of
human will put to the test. The museum development portion was nothing short of
an emotional marathon. Grasping at messages, meaning, reverence, relevance,
identifying iconic imagery, artifacts, specimens and objects and weaving all
these into a shape and finally something with form and real substance. Exhibits
had to be developed, designed, built and shipped…” INTO SPACE!”

It was the rocket fuel octane
version of ‘Collect, Preserve & Interpret.' In the end, the
international team of museum workers were able with the help of visionary
engineers to grip real presence. It was a difficult needle to thread because
egos are always in play and yet common cause to complete the dream was the
arbiter of the process and allowed success to be plucked from the dangerous
clutches of vanity and too much of any one form of individual expression. It
wound up being a truly UNIFIED thing. They built a package that works. I am
here now floating a bit above the bench below me a witness to that success.

Today the International
Space Station Museum swirls above the Earth and while visitation
remains somewhat limited, the ability for casual travelers from all walks of
life to make the trek up here grows all the time. No pilgrim who encounters
this museum experience, walks away unchanged. Along the museum’s Bio-Map
corridor, an arboretum and garden walkway of living plants worldwide thrives
suspended above the clouds. With root-balls gently cradled in glazed dew
dripped cases plant life drift in zero gravity, floating across a backdrop of
the sunlit side of

the
earth, every word trails off into a whisper and emotions are turned fundamental
and raw and become too difficult for even those poets who have visited the
museum to render.

The adjacent and aptly named Ark
of Memory captures people’s imaginations not in their heads but somewhere
in their hearts. One can feel individual emotions being manufactured within
this visual capsule of objects 254 miles straight up. Artifacts and specimens
in twos, a pair each selected from every country on earth below, distill
visually what we are capable of as a species when our intentions are simple but
our gestures grand. It is what defines us human beings to see the products of
our hands framed entirely by the place we call home.

And I would be remiss and truly
not a museum person myself were I not to marvel at the display mechanics. The
Ark display is itself an intricate network of filament threads that crisscross
the chamber top to bottom and side to side intimately and invisibly holding the
hundreds of objects safely. Definitely a nominee for the mount-makers ‘Hall of
Fame.'

And there is programming! The
very first school group to visit the ISSM will be fittingly enough, kids from
Calvin Coolidge Elementary School in West Peoria, Illinois. They arrive next
month by space bus, compliments of a grant facilitated through the American
Alliance of Museums. Just exactly what the children will be doing during their
visit remains top secret however, both the earthbound members of the ISSM
Education Dept. in Florida and the two members of the museum’s rotating staff
on board the space station guarantee an experience. No duh!

I need to wrap this up but
indulge me regarding two more things. While most of you have seen the images of
ISSM and its exhibits streamed through every format and social media resource I
have to mention following.

What is a museum without a
‘Beast’? What is a museum without a signature attraction? Well the ISSM doesn’t
disappoint. The world’s largest and most complete Plesiosaur, a Jurassic
monster all razor teeth, arching ribs and endless neck reaching over 90 feet in
length swims across its very own cosmic capsule. This incredibly fragile and
nearly complete fossil specimen could have never been mounted on earth safely
because of the natural stresses on the fragile material due to gravity’s
relentless pull.

Instead the creature floats
almost freely in Zero G held together in position safely by nearly invisible
glass rods and filaments and accented by deep blue liquid-like waves of light
that pass through the mount. The best part – Visitors are able to float
weightless around the extinct reptile viewing it and evening turning its
aquarium-like tube 360 degrees, communing with every facet of the extinct
evolutionary wonder.

Finally, the incredibly
anticipated Arts Future Gallery will open very soon. With the international
call for entries complete and the judging now completed, artists from around
the world are beginning the process of uploading their files to be replicated
by the Museums array of 4 – 3D printers. The idea for creating a sculpture
competition utilizing the 3D printers that were used to make building parts
during the museum’s assembly came from earth bound veteran museum exhibit
preparator Michael Paha in Kansas City. An artist himself who worked on the
team that developed the Ark of Memory exhibit, Mike suggested that the 3D
printers could be used to create new sculptures for the art gallery by artists
below. The first exhibition will feature pieces designed to turn freely while
attached by a tether to a traditionally styled pedestal.

The beauty of the International
Space Station Museum is that there was no one person, no genius responsible and
no solo maker of this place. It belonged to everyone and now stands as a truly
collaborative effort. It is ours altogether. In 2018 when the idea for this
place was set in motion those citizens were not fully prepared to imagine or
predict such an outcome as this. But because they possessed a true spirit, their
vision never dimmed and their hand never stayed or interrupted.

What the Earthlings of 2018
handed to us in 2040 was more than a gift. They established new rules for
engagement. 2018 handed over inspiration to 2040. We now possess a tool in the
form of this Museum in space that will flourish in the hands of an as yet
unknown future interpreter. A newer version of ourselves, a giver to give form
to our hopes and compassion and perhaps even on occasion to our sorrow. This
museum represents a new and collective sense of perspective and worldwide
self-confidence.

Tuesday, November 21, 2017

It sometimes seems like every new museum with national ambitions wants to be located in DC. Near, if not on, the National Mall. This despite the difficulty of succeeding in the shadow of the fabulous, free Smithsonian museums (a challenge that contributed to the demise of the Corcoran Gallery, and may be a factor in the current troubles of the Newseum). Today on the Blog, Elizabeth Williams and Tracey Mitchell tell us about an alternative approach to building a national museum through creating outposts across the country, each tailored to local conditions. Liz is a founder and President & CEO of the National Food & Beverage Foundation. Tracey is the director of the Pacific Food & Beverage Museum in Los Angeles, California.

Getting started in any new endeavor is always a matter of appropriate capitalization and a realistic plan. And of course a dose of imaginative megalomania, bubbling gently below the surface. But raising the capital for a new museum can be an exercise in chasing your tail – by the time you reach your fundraising goal, the cost of the project has risen by 10% or more, making it impossible to begin. When the National Food & Beverage Foundation (NatFAB) was formed in 2004, we were an organization trying to create a new museum without having agreed on exactly what form it would take. We were also beginning without an angel donor or a governmental agency behind us. After mounting a few pop-up exhibits, on a scale that we thought manageable, we opened the Southern Food & Beverage Museum in 2008 as a small regional museum about food and beverages in a mall in New Orleans. That space served as our incubator for five years.

Gradually we began to deepen and broaden our collection, our exhibits, and even our resources. In 2013 we moved into our current home, a larger building that gives us space for an integrated restaurant and bar, as well as a demonstration kitchen. We are very fortunate, but we have grown slowly and gradually. We did not raise enough money to be a large organization on our first day.

Southern Museum of Food and Beverage, interior

We found that people from outside of the geographic region covered by SoFAB, also have a desire to have their food and drinkways represented in a museum. So we began to conceive of a network of regional food and drink museums linked together around the country. Together they would form a national museum, although not one under one roof in one place. We plan to build this network using our proven strategy of starting small and growing organically. Our first step in this direction will take place in Los Angeles, where the NatFAB is launching the Pacific Food & Beverage Museum. PacFAB will become the second star in what we hope will become a growing constellation of museums that taken together will form a single American food and beverage museum.

Distributing a food and drink museum via multiple locations is an intuitive concept; identity and place are at the heart of our business model, and will determine the form and support of each location. In Los Angeles, on the eve of opening in our newly acquired location, we are pausing to reflect on who we are and how we operate. Our LA programming so far has consisted of pop-up events at various locations, but our constituents—home cooks, consumers, agricultural business, large and local, food industry proponents, restaurateurs, chefs, bartenders, and grocers—don’t seem to mind. They have a sense of ownership in our work. We’ve been able to evoke a sense of home and celebration engaging people through their senses, introducing them to history, science, and cuisines in a way that makes it immediately present, even if they have to do a bit of traveling around town to see our exhibits.

NatFAB provided the start-up funding for our west coast location, but now PacFAB has formed its own subsidiary organization and is conducting its own fundraising. Currently, the funding is through private funders who are involved in the food industry, such as restaurateurs, chefs, and investors in food concerns. In this region, growers’ influences reach beyond the local to global, and we hope to bridge borders and approach supporters in countries where imports and businesses are who have an impact on cuisines and culture here on the West Coast. Historically, there have been some interesting connections involving food and beverages between West Coast and Peru, for instance. Some of these connections are obvious, like Mexico and Southern California with Sonoran food. The history of cuisine in this area crosses the abstractions of political borders, so what we will be offering from PacFAB pertains to the Pacific region as a whole and not just the Pacific coast of the United States. We also get a financial boost from the fact that the Pacific and Southern outposts of the Food and Beverage Museum can share back-of-house services, such as accounting, marketing, and technology,

Always fascinated by the way the lure of nutmeg and peppercorns motivated the exploration of the world, Liz Williams was lucky to be born into a family of Sicilian heritage in New Orleans. She grew up eating in two great food traditions. She is a founder and President & CEO of the National Food & Beverage Foundation, which includes that Southern Food & Beverage Museum, the Museum of the American Cocktail, the Boyd Library . She coauthored with Stephanie Jane Carter, The Encyclopedia of Law and Food. In 2013 AltaMira published New Orleans: A Food Biography. In 2016 her book, co-authored with Chris McMillian, Lift Your Spirits, was published by LSU Press.

Director of the Pacific Food & Beverage Museum in Los Angeles, California, Tracey Mitchell, is a native of New Orleans. Having grown up on Julia Child’s cooking shows, her mother imparted her love of cooking and food.

Thursday, November 16, 2017

I hope you've had a chance to read your print copy of Museum 2040, or to download a digital copy. If
you’re a little confused about why the magazine is set in the future, read my introduction to this special issue. As
I noted in that post, one of the hardest things to project is the rate of
adoption of a given technology. (Roy Amara at the Institute of the Future encapsulated
this truth in Amara’s Law, which states that we tend to overestimate the impact
of new technology in the short term, underestimate it in the long term.) TodayTiffany Fredette, offline marketing and graphics specialist at Displays2go, offers her thoughts on how far some
relatively new technologies will have evolved in by the year 2040. Displays2go
is one of the advertisers supporting this special issue of Museum magazine.

In the year 2040, “the internet of things” will no longer be
a talking point—this technological network will practically be interlaced with
our DNA. Trillions of connected devices will be transmitting and gathering data
seamlessly behind the scenes. Augmented and virtual reality will be a part of
everyday life, not just something to experience via a cool gadget select
friends or relatives may have. Together, these advances will transform what it
means to “visit” a museum.

Even before you enter a museum or gallery, your devices will
be gathering data based on your conversations at home. When you remark to your
partner, “We should really take the kids to the Museum of Science,” your
personal artificial intelligence assistant will start checking calendars, schedules,
modes of transportation, and the interests of your family members. Knowing that
Tommy loves dinosaurs, it will notice the upcoming opening of a new fossil
exhibit. It will scan for days when you have no meetings scheduled for work,
and cross check traffic projections. By the time you ask, “When’s a good time to
go to the Museum of Science?” it will promptly
reply “Friday, the 24th of next month, at 2 pm.”

Connected devices will be directly integrated into the
fabric of museums and exhibits of every kind. When patrons walk through the
doors with their own connected devices, the transfer of information will happen
unobtrusively. Museums will use the
collected data to personalize the experience of any patron that visits for a
tour. Don’t like to read the labels? No problem – an audio clip will play as
you stop in front of the artwork. Not sure of the time period in which the work
was made? Simply look at the art and ask, “When’s this from?” aloud—the audio
will play automatically. Want to experience a museum visit the ‘old-fashioned
way’, i.e. a very basic walking tour? Then that’s what will be offered to you, because
the museum will have saved your preferences from previous visits.

How will augmented and virtual reality come into play? Of
course people will still make traditional trips to a museum. But what if you
wanted to visit, without physically
going anywhere? Those same connected devices will be your guide and mode of
“transportation”. By 2040, virtual assistants will be a ubiquitous home
appliance. Simply saying “Virtual assistant, bring me to the Max Ernst exhibit
at the museum” will transform the space before you with a high-resolution hologram.
Or synch with your virtual reality glasses, and you’ll be immersed in the
exhibit without having to leave your front door. By 2040, VR may stimulate all
five senses. Imagine being able to smell a botanical garden 3,000 miles away!

School field trips to museums will be completely reimagined
as well. No need to bus 50 or more students an hour away, wasting gas and spewing
hydrocarbons. With virtual reality, teachers can take the children on an
adventure without having to leave the school building. Putting culture and immersive history at students’
fingertips (via haptic gloves!), will enable us to increase the knowledge and
appreciation of generations to come.

What will this mean for museums themselves? Will staff be downsized,
and some positions become extinct? Perhaps, but new jobs may be created. Will
some museums be forced to close? Probably not. The rise of virtual visits will
only highlight the multisensory advantages of going to a museum IRL (in real
life). Just as the rise of digital retail is leading stores to emphasize the
pleasure of actually seeing, feeling, and touching items; museum visits will emphasize
on-site experiences. Virtual and augmented reality will represent merely an
alternative option. Physical institutions will still appeal to the human
element; even as they enhance their exhibits with dynamically interactive,
digitally transformed presentations.

Museums and places of culture will always have a place in
the world. As with anything, staying ‘up with times’ is the key to their
continued success. What will a museum look like in 3010? Now that is beyond my comprehension. What I
do know, is that companies like Displays2go are in it for the long term. We’re
here to support the needs of the modern museum, and we’ll continue advancing
our offering to meet those needs into the future.

Thursday, November 9, 2017

I hope Museum 2040 has arrived in your mailbox, or that you
have downloaded a digital copy. If you’re a little confused about why the
magazine is set in the future, read my introduction to this special issue. As I mention in that post, I am immensely
grateful to the advertisers who were willing to play along with this
unconventional approach. Some created ads that are, themselves, bits of
immersive fiction. Others offered to contribute some content for the blog.
Today, Meaghan Patterson offers some
thoughts about the future based on her experience as executive director/CEO of
the Alberta Museums Association.

Museums just aren’t what they used to be. The past decade has seen a
significant shift in the way museums operate within their communities. Our
current global reality is one of shifting demographics, increasing
environmental worries, rapidly changing technologies, and economic uncertainty.
The resiliency and optimism of our museum sector has been put to the test, and
these changes have been viewed as challenges and opportunities for learning and
for growth. They are opportunities to educate ourselves and our communities
while empowering museums by demonstrating the importance of the work that we
do. With long term sustainability as the goal, museums have been working to
reposition themselves in their communities, collaborate with new partners, seek
funding that supports long-term planning, and use a multi-sectoral approach to
finding innovative and inclusive solutions.

These changes were met at first with some resistance and some uncertainty,
both within and outside our sector. Some museums that rolled up their sleeves
and tried to get involved were asked not what they could contribute to the
conversation, but why they were at the table in the first place. In Alberta, initiatives
such as the Alberta Museum Association’s (AMA) Community Engagement Initiative and Future Coalition Summit helped
encourage both museums and their potential community partners to reconsider the
role of museums in their communities, and to foster a true understanding of
community engagement and social responsibility. Now, empowered with a greater
understanding of how those values directly connect to the success and
sustainability of our sector, museums are beginning to make proactive changes
towards deeper community connections.

Looking forward, it is more important than ever for the museum sector
to position itself as vital to the success of communities, and to understand
that this repositioning relies directly on the relationships museums have with
their larger environment. Museums know that a strong, vibrant future requires a
focus on two realities: that museums have a crucial role to play in creating
and maintaining healthy, happy, successful communities, and that engaging in
socially responsible work is crucial to maintaining relevancy and resiliency in
increasingly unstable times. In short, museums are demonstrating and making
clear that communities need museums as much as museums need their communities.

In the future, museums will continue to facilitate conversations about
issues that matter. They will utilize their position as trusted sources of
information by continuing to invest in programs and services that have positive
impacts. They will draw on the inspirational and creative work that has been
done by other museums. In Alberta, we have shining examples such as the Kerry Wood
Nature Centre and Historic Fort Normandeau’s partnership
with the Central Alberta Refugees Effort to support and provide services to new
Canadians, or the Peace River Museum, Archives, and Mackenzie Centre’s focus on
encouraging conversations on mental health and wellness and the lasting impacts of
residential schools. The AMA is also an active supporter of
the Coalition
of Museums for Climate Justice. Museums will develop and strengthen new
partnerships, and demonstrate a commitment towards real change.

Museums and the museum sector will continue to see significant changes
going forward, particularly in the next ten years. As museums both large and
small continue to enact change and take on these challenges, they will be
supported by each other and by their sector, and encouraged to focus on
community involvement and support in their long term planning. Our vision for
the future is ambitious, but our museums are engaged, resilient, and innovative.
Our sector has embraced, adapted to, and learned from challenges, and it has a
bright future: one in which museums continue to utilize their diverse skills
and their creativity, affect positive change in their communities, and are
fully recognized and valued as hubs for growth, empowerment, and learning. #MuseumsDoMore.

Several people, seeing my social media posts on the
convening, have asked me whether it is a Center for the Future of Museums project.
It isn’t, at least not directly. The Alliance is tackling this issue to further
our strategic focus on thought leadership, and it is true that CFM is the
Alliance’s major thought leadership initiative. However, use of funds resulting
from the sale of deaccessioned collections isn’t inherently a futurist topic. It
is very much a problem arising from inside the museum field, with which we have
grappled for decades, though how we resolve the issue may have profound
implications for the future of our sector. (More on that in a post to come.)

However, having been asked to help develop the agenda and
act as lead moderator, I bring a CFM approach to the endeavor. CFM’s gaze is
always directed outside our field, trying to discover what museums might learn
from other sectors. Since the meeting is being hosted by the Harvard Museums of
Science and Culture, I started knocking at digital doors of the Harvard
Business School (HBS). Surely, I thought, for-profit companies must on occasion
find themselves caught between ethical rocks and financial hard places. My
colleagues and I had a number of discussions with various faculty about how
they teach related materials, and how this approach might be relevant for
museums.

Nien-hê Hsieh, assoc professor of business administration, HBS

As a result, I am enormously pleased to announce that Dr. Nien-hê Hsieh,
associate professor of business administration, will join us Thursday morning,
setting the stage by leading participants through a case study from the HBS. Professor
Hsieh teaches Leadership and Corporate Accountability to first-year MBA
students and to Executive Education participants in the Program for Leadership
Development. He joined the HBS faculty from The Wharton School of the
University of Pennsylvania, where he was an associate professor of legal studies
and business ethics and served as co-director of the Wharton Ethics Program. Professor
Hsieh is well-positioned to help attendees explore real-world strategies for
taking considered action when both ethical and financial pressures come to
bear.

And that’s a challenge facing our December convening. It’s going
to require a massive act of collective will to resist gravitating yet again to
a discussion about on ethics, and think instead about practical solutions. But
I’m looking forward to trying this approach, especially with the help of one of
the “smart people who works for someone else.” (See Joy’s Law, at top.)

*Translation: Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD);
American Association for State and Local History (AASLH); Association of
Academic Museums and Galleries (AAMG); New England Museum Association (NEMA)

Tuesday, October 31, 2017

The November/December issue of Museum mailed out yesterday, as well as going up on the web. (This
issue of the magazine is available as a free download for members and
non-members alike). When you open your
print or digital copy, you may notice something a little odd. We published this
edition a little early—23 years early, to be exact.

This bit of chronological legerdemain serves as prelude to
the tenth anniversary of the Center for the Future of Museums, which falls in
2018. The goal of this exercise in “future fiction” is to help you investigate
one possible future and think about how our organizations might respond. As you
read the stories in this issue, I hope you ask yourself, “Do I think this could
happen? Do I want this to happen?” And, perhaps most importantly, “Does this
have to wait until 2040, or can I make it happen now?”

I hereby award futurist points to any reader who asks “in which
version of the year 2040 do these stories take place?” Of course one of the
main purposes of strategic foresight is to help us think about many
plausible ways the future could play out. This issue of Museum is set in one specific future that might result from
existing limits and challenges playing out over coming decades. This scenario,
dubbed A New Equilibrium, was
developed with the input of many people inside and outside the museum field,
drawing on mainstream research and projections on demographics, technology, the
economy, environment and other sectors. For example, in this version of 2040:

The US population is older and more diverse than it is now.
The ratio of retired people to people of working age (so-called “old-age
dependency”) has climbed to 38% from 25% in 2017.

Economic stratification has continued to grow in the past
few decades. The top 10% of families now hold 85% of the wealth in the US,
while the bottom 60% hold 1%.

In education, there has been significant growth in the
number of private schools, and charter schools now serve 15 percent of the
public school population (triple the number in 2014).

Impact philanthropy has become the dominant guiding
principle of individual and foundation funding, and nonprofits are expected to
provide concrete, measurable data of how they have improved the environment, or
people’s lives, in order to secure support.

In the face of these challenges, museums have prospered. Attendance
is robust, our organizations are financially stable, and our visitors, staff,
and board members reflect our communities.

The scenario in place, I sent an invitation out through the Alliance’s
professional networks for people willing to immerse themselves in this version
of the future, writing content that explores what museums are doing in order to
thrive in the face of these challenges. There were a few ground rules:

Congratulations to the newly accredited museumsof 2040

Authors had to stay within the bounds of this particular
scenario: a future created by current trends playing out over the next decades.
For example, they could posit colonies on the Moon or Mars. (After all, Elon
Musk is spending billions on his plans to colonize Mars, hoping to launch
the first flights in the 2020s). However, they couldn’t introduce massively
disruptive events such as a global fatal pandemic disease or a nuclear world
war III, or invoke the most extreme estimates regarding climate change.

Authors were only permitted to use the names of real museums
if they themselves represented that institution, or obtained permission from
the organization in question. For this reason, you may notice many, many
museums with names similar, but not identical, to existing organizations.

Authors could write as themselves (from the perspective of
being 23 years older than they are now), or they could invent fictional
personas reflecting people they imagine will be working in our field by that
time. For example, Sarah Sutton attributes her opinion piece on museums,
equity, and environmental sustainability to an environmental activist named Ocean
Six.

Given these prompts and these constraints, what stories did
people invent? In addition to Sarah’s (sorry, Ocean’s) musings on the next frontier
of green, that is. Rachel Hatch, program officer for community vitality at the
McConnell Foundation, gives us a funder’s take on how museums are supporting
the creative economy in 2040, envisioning how universal basic income might
create a cadre of “citizen artists.” Adam Rozan’s keynote from the AAM 2040
annual meeting explores how the very concept of “museum” has changed over time,
coming to encompass roles that used to be siloed in libraries, community
centers, schools, and places of worship. Omar Eaton-Martinez writes about the
newly formed US Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and the role museums can
play in healing and remembrance. (In this future, Omar holds the position of
secretary of the Smithsonian Institution where he is, in the present, intern
and fellows program manager for the National Museum of American History. And
President-elect Sanai Eaton-Martínez, who is creating the TRC? That’s his
daughter. 😊)

Nicole Ivy, the Alliance’s director of inclusion, took over
the Community section of the magazine, crowdsourcing input on what museum jobs
might exist in 2040. (My favorites include poet-in-residence, digital
fabrication specialist, and spiritual services director.) Together, Nicole and
I tried to ensure that the magazine as a whole reflects the diversity—of race,
culture, age and (non-binary) gender—we hope will come to characterize our
field.

Though it is immense fun, writing from the future did pose
some challenges, notably the willingness to relinquish control! While I took the liberty of writing a few key elements into the issue, our authors were the primary world-builders. As supporting researcher, I tackled another key challenge, looking for credible projections
from mainstream sources to feed the writers’ work. For example, at the Bureau
of Labor Statistics I found projections
on labor participation that assess the impact of a growing population that
is both older and more diverse. Several authors wanted to flood various areas
of the country, and we spent hours manipulating the Surging
Seas Risk Zone Map to test their propositions. One of the hardest things to
project is the rate of adoption of a given technology. Roy Amara at the
Institute of the Future formulated Amara’s Law, which states that we tend to
overestimate the impact of new technology in the short term, underestimate it
in the long term. Many, many of the 2040 authors wrote about virtual reality—which,
of course, is an exciting, shiny technology just beginning to come into its
own. By 2040, will it be so embedded in our lives as to be unremarkable, still
struggling to go mainstream, or will it have fizzled out? Read the issue to see what our authors envision for museums and VR.

Another challenge was maintaining internal consistency.
Authors were given free rein to embellish this future, adding details in
keeping with the spirit of the scenario’s parameters. This necessitated much tweaking
as we tried to bring the details of different articles into alignment. At the
twenty third-and-a-half hour, I was frantically texting authors from the
airport as we tried to resolve contradictory statements regarding museum
visitation in two of the features. I wouldn’t be surprised if a reader with an
eye for detail finds inconsistencies we missed—please point them out.

My enduring thanks to all the authors who spent countless
hours polishing their pieces (and for their patience with my suggested edits
and tweaks.) There is a full list of their actual identities on page 54. I am
particularly to Susie Wilkening for creating the two-page By The Numbers overview
of this future and for helping me
search for all sorts of credible “numbers” to flesh out our scenario. And I
want to give a shout-out to all the advertisers
who supported this unconventional issue, particularly those who played along
with the scenario. You will see their visions of future products and services
scattered throughout.

Museum 2040 is
only the beginning of a much longer exploration of this and other potential
futures. In coming months, I will use the CFM Blog to share additional content riffing
on the New Equilibrium scenario: authors sharing the thought process behind
their stories as well as additional future fiction. Some essays will explore
interesting plot points appearing in the magazine stories, such as the link
between universal basic income and citizen artists; potential museum uses for
the open, secure, distributed digital ledgers supported by blockchain; and the
role of museums in national reconciliation.

You can play too! Enjoy the full issue, with our
compliments, by downloading a free PDF copy here. In addition to reading and
discussing the contents in your workplace, I encourage you to put your digital
pen to paper and try your own hand at immersive future fiction. You can access
a synopsis of the New Equilibrium scenario here, to inform your storytelling. Pitch
your ideas using the comment section, below, or email me at emerritt (at)
aam-us.org with the subject line Museum 2040.

As part of our tenth anniversary celebration, CFM will
publish scenarios describing other potential futures—bright and dark,
mainstream and unexpected—throughout 2018, together with a guide to using these
stories as a tool for institutional planning. I look forward to helping you
imagine the many ways these futures may play out, as well as the strategies
museums will create to thrive no matter what comes.